The game has almost run its course, and for me the game was a complete letdown. I can see from these forums that there are still massive issues with the game and i just wanted to know if you have had a positive/negative experience, have you had value for money out of the game?, or just a big headache?.

Personally, i found the game unplayable due to lag issues and got rid pretty quickly, i got my money back so i didn't lose out financially, but overall i believe that in this day and age a multiplayer game should be capable of running to a fairly high standard, rather than using the same multiplay engine from a couple of years ago that worked reasonably well at best.

If you could turn back the clock, and knowing what you now know, would you buy this game?.

I don't have problems with the engine looks nice enough and why build a new engine for a console that is at his end. I don't have any lag have alway's a full bar other player's aswell maybe just one player with a yellow bar, but that is very rare

My only big problems with this game is the damage multiplier how many times i died with two shots in top of my feet its ridiculious. The shooting mechanics are not right in this game but for some strange reason i still play it. Just love arcade shooters but if they could tweak the damage multiplier it would be perfect

Also the shotgun is not alway's one shot from close by, very annoying

I also think that black ops 2 have some great maps like yemen and stand off, i guess i would buy it again. But if ghosts doens't tweak the damage multiplier i would consider to change to another game.

After MW3 I had become leery of the COD franchise, and rather than pre-order like always, I decided to wait and read reviews before jumping in. Just like this post started, some people reported game breaking lag issues and others reported smooth sailing. Further, some reported that MW3 was a mess, but blops2 was fine, some reported MW3 was fine, but blops 2 was a mess,while others reported both were fine and others still reported both were borked.

When I found a sale in April for $30.00 I decided to take the gamble. With the exception of a few weeks here and there when the matchmaking worked in my favor, I have been behind from 1/2 to over a second behind for most of my game play. I can stick the barrel of an AR inside an enemy shirt and a full clip later not even have a hit marker, much less a kill. I wish I had a coin for every time I was killed, then saw the opponent come around a corner, then raise his weapon, then fire, then re-aim and actually hit me. Remember, I am dead from his bullets before I even see him and he is not pre-firing.

blops 2 quickly became a game I only loaded in order to socialize with friends, since it became apparent very quickly that I would never have so much as a even playing field. I was able to keep costs down with the wait until finding it for 1/2 price and refusing to buy any DLC until they fixed the basic flaws in the game, but even at $30.00 I feel I overpaid for what I ended up getting..

Even with waiting 5 months to purchase, then continuing to use occasionally for another 5 months Activision made no effort to correct issues identified and reported by buyers starting on day one. In fact, outside of weapon nerfing and map glitch corrections, it appears the only coding team still employed after launch was the DLC creators. (I wonder if "Creators" is a proper word since a portion of their "creations" was re-releasing older maps.) To this date, a month before Ghosts if you have lag, tech support blames it on your lan or ISP. Period. There is no Activision failure in the equation that they will admit.

Seeing that Ghosts is still going to be on a revised (again) Quake3 engine, an engine originally released in 1999. a year in which AOL dial up was still a powerhouse and screaming internet was1.5Mbps T1's for $600 a month tells me that we are seeing nothing more but additional cost cutting/saving and relying on the franchise popularity for sales numbers rather than product value.

With the trends of the franchise running to please an ever younger crowd, (small maps, respawn and fire within a second, run headless and fire every 3 seconds because tactics are all but pointless and going 32-37 will lead your team in points and level you up fastest, I don't see any point on continuing to feed the coffers at Activision.

If instead of Cranked the selling point was "all maps have areas that will be dominated by short, medium and long range weapons, map size and sight lines means no more spawn killing and going 20-6 with 2 UAV shootdowns will score more points than 32-31 and no team support activity, all on our brand new engine, netcode and matchmaking system" then I would be interested.

For those of you who like the direction of the franchise, I wish you well with your neon camo that makes it impossible to stay hidden, your bacon reticules and 360 trick shots.

The game has almost run its course, and for me the game was a complete letdown. I can see from these forums that there are still massive issues with the game and i just wanted to know if you have had a positive/negative experience, have you had value for money out of the game?, or just a big headache?.

Personally, i found the game unplayable due to lag issues and got rid pretty quickly, i got my money back so i didn't lose out financially, but overall i believe that in this day and age a multiplayer game should be capable of running to a fairly high standard, rather than using the same multiplay engine from a couple of years ago that worked reasonably well at best.

If you could turn back the clock, and knowing what you now know, would you buy this game?.

I definitely got my moneys worth with BO2. With well over a month of time played in this title it's right up there with MW2 as my most played CoD, and although a big portion of that time played was frustrating (due to lag), i got plenty of entertainment out of the game with a small amount of money.

The biggest problem in my opinion is the inconsistent connection this game has, and it's been going both up and downhill during the course of the game. Sometimes the game ran great, but most of the time i had a slight lag handicap or had to play against at least one guy that seemed to sponge almost every bullet i fired at him. Sometimes the patching / hotfixes made things worse, and the game got borderline unplayable. I did take a 2 month break from the game, and also didn't end up buying the last map pack due to the connection so i can't say i'm happy about how the game plays on average, but luckily it wasn't as bad MW3 was for me so i kept playing.

The constant server issues are also pretty annoying. It seems like there's something wrong with them every weekend and especially at the times when there are plenty of players online. You cannot connect at all sometimes or everything in the MP menus that has to access info from the servers doesn't work properly, there's lobbies with constant connection interruptions or your character starts to move in slow motion, and you get other extensive lag issues every time there are plenty of people online (shoot first and die consistently).

I also don't like that they screw you over if you play solo by throwing you constantly in on going and lost games (even in FFA), and give you the bottom half of the lobby leaderboard to team up with all the time.

I like the pick 10 system and the idea of having scorestreaks instead of killstreaks. I also like the fact that there's no BS like last stand or death streaks, commando lunge, or lethal support streaks like in MW3. The weapon balance is pretty good, and i like how everything in the game can be countered.

Many people don't like the map layouts and their size, or the extensive amount of head glitching spots. The spawns can be pretty bad too, but overall i liked most of the maps (Nuketown and Hijacked are the ones i usually vote against). Even if pretty much all of the maps had 3 main routes and pretty distinctive choke points, i felt like flanking was easier than before which in my opinion is a good thing, and i also like the fact that most buildings / rooms have multiple access points.

Overall opinion, eh? Let me sum up as best I can with all the experiences I've had with this game.

I think it was worth my money, though I got a pretty good deal on this game back in November when it first came out.

Campaign had some nice twists, though the plot twists were a little predictable, but they had some cool gadgets and the like. Multiple choice and endings feature seems like a prototype, and I wonder if it'll be used again. Being able to choose a loadout was actually nice for a change, considering how limited in scope your options for weapons scavenging were in past games.

Multiplayer. Well, this was my first time experiencing lag compensation and man was it frustrating. Could be a lot better, but I like the challenges; the Game Mode Master challenges and the gold camo challenges, save for a few which bordered on unreasonable. Considering this was also the first time I played to Max Prestige, that was probably because there was a lot to do in Multiplayer.

That being said, lag comp + fast character model speed = recipe for disaster. At that point you might as well give everyone a perk that causes your character sprite to leave afterimages like you were a ninja, or flash step around the map. Lot of times where you would either get one shotted by the Remington from 15 feet away when the killcam showed them being 7 feet away from you before they fired. Also a lot of times where the camera played tricks on you, like in this clip Black Ops 2 - Camera Tricks Lag Compensation - YouTube

However, I really liked the options you had with the custom games and bots, which was technically the only reason I bought the game until I discovered how much more there was to it. I hope they keep that going, because I would've bought MW2 and MW3 if they had bots to practice with in them.

Finally, Zombies. I liked the maps, I liked the weapons, I liked the new perks, ideas and settings and I liked the major easter eggs, but I think that zombies has gotten a little too complicated. Why do eight steps just for an upgraded weapon like in Origins? Buildables were nice but I honestly feel they shouldn't be a mandatory part of getting the full zombies experience. It really doesn't quite compare to Black Ops 1 Zombies and they ruined the climax of the entire overarching story but that's neither here nor there.

Overall I think I got my money's worth with Black Ops 2, but they need to fix the multiplayer for hell's sake. The MLG/Esports/Pro tourney experiment with this game's MP has failed and Treyarch needs to go back to the drawing board for that. To be fair, gunwise it was probably the most balanced game yet. Pistols were actually legitimately good in this game. If they didn't adopt quickscoping it would have been better.

The connections/matchmaking are not so good (something they have given attention to in the next instalment)

Worth the coin? Going out one evening for dinner with the wife is 60-120 on average. So instead of going out once in the year I buy a game and the DLC instead, and play it for days if not weeks on end (playing time). When I cannot find a good lobby (lag and/or network related) I play zombies.

Could things be better? yep. Worth the money? yep*

* I can appreciate that the level of frustration had by those who have to scrimp and save to buy a game could be more elevated than my own

I personally hated it. I liked Blackops 1. Was disappointed by 2. Lag issues, people cheating/boosting and maps. I will never buy a treyarch game again, that's for sure! You would think that they would have improved the game and maps. Recycling old maps, then why don't I play the original one. Seems lately, when I log on, it takes a while for the server or I get server is down.

treyarch does nothing to improve the game. They don't do nothing about the people cheating. At least xbox does something. That's why i'm going back to a xbox. I'll pay the $60.00 a year, just for the security. If they would let you block people that you don't want to play with, would be great or just do something about the people boosting/cheating. They say they don't have the man power for it. I guess money is more important than a customer/fan.

I am disappointed with Black Ops II. I like Black Ops a lot more than its sequel. I actually like Black Ops the most out of all the games. The multiplayer is not fun. I was glad they removed pro perks, at least. I just don't have a fun factor in Black Ops 2, the same thing with Modern Warfare 3. There was no fun factor in the multiplayer.

I am disappointed with the zombies mode, too. I detest the "forced teamwork" aspect that Treyarch feels the need to incorporate into the maps. Zombies, to me, has become over-complicated and boring, the same thing with multiplayer. I feel that less is more, in many cases.

IMO BO2 was the 2nd worst COD title (WAW 1st). While being one of the worst, I still had fun playing the game with family and friends. It was worth the game purchase but I feel like I wasted my money on DLC. There just simply wasn't enough people purchasing DLC to make it playable for me so I had to disable or delete them to have any type of fun at all.

For a billion dollar franchise, the issues we faced should have not been issues. Matchmaking was the core problem of this game IMO.